There was a fundamental change in philosophy I had about two years ago that transformed the way I read and approach books which has accelerated my enjoyment and ability to read or listen more. There’s a great blogpost I just read really outlining this approach. I think this is an unconventional approach, so maybe could be important for someone to hear. Here’s the gist though.
1. If a book looks interesting, buy it. It’s an investment.
2. Don’t feel like you have to trudge through and finish a bad book, or not start a new one because you’re already reading one.
3. Feel free to skip ahead if a section you find is boring, or it’s not connecting with you. (Mainly more for non-fiction books).
4. Get used to reading multiple books at the same time. Learning in a multi-disciplinary way creates different mental models for your brain to make connections faster and find creativity across disciplines.
5. When you open up your Kindle or Audible, you will never feel bored because you are only reading what you’re “in the mood” for today, so you’ll actually be more interested and engaged for whatever you’re reading or listening to today.
I learned this approach from Naval Ravikant, the founder and CEO of AngelList on a podcast. Here’s how he describes it:
“Everyone I know is stuck on some book. I’m sure you’re stuck on some book right now. It’s page 332, you can’t go on any further but you know you should finish the book, so what do you do? You give up reading books for a while. That for me was a tragedy, because I grew up on books, and then I switched to blogs and then I switched to Twitter and Facebook, and then I realized I wasn’t really learning anything, I was just taking little dopamine snacks all day long.
We’re taught from a young age that books are something you finish, books are sacred. When you go to school and you’re assigned to read a book, you have to finish the book… A really good book costs $10 or $20 and can change your life in a meaningful way. It’s not something I believe in saving money on. This was even back when I was broke and I had no money. I always spent money on books. I never viewed that as an expense. That’s an investment to me. I probably spend 10 times as much money on books as I actually get through. In other words, for every $200 worth of books I buy, I actually end up making it through 10%. I’ll read $20 worth of books, but it’s still absolutely worth it. I open up my kindle, I look through. Based on my mood, I’ll flip through to whatever book matches my mood…
The most important thing that does for me is it lets me read on a regular basis. If the book is getting a little boring, I’ll skip ahead. Sometimes I’ll start reading a book in the middle because some paragraph caught my eye and I’ll just continue from there, and I feel no obligation whatsoever to finish the book.
The problem with books is that, to write a book, to publish a physical, dead tree book, takes a lot of work and effort and money. Sometimes people start wrapping long books around simple ideas. Those are probably my least favorite books. That’s why I avoid the whole business and self-help category because you generally have one good idea and it’s buried in hundreds or thousands of pages and lots of anecdotes.
I just view it as a blog archive. A blog might have 300 posts on it and you could read just the two, three, five that you need right now. I think you can think of a book the same way. You skim very very quickly to find the ones that grab you, that are important and interesting for you, and then you stick to those and go really deep. There’s exploration, and there’s exploitation. So you explore a lot of books until you decide that there’s something there to exploit.”